Page 78 of Faceless

His throat strangled on the words he could not say.

“The legal part stands,” she said. “You said so plainly, and you do not say things you do not mean. I know that much about you.”

“I had sworn to myself,” he said, “that I would not. Not until I could offer you more than this. I broke it on Thursday.”

“You said that before. I was present, if you recall.”

Not the wit. He could not bear the wit now. He closed his eyes and started over. “I have been sitting upstairs, considering Thursday and the three days since, and I find… the three days are the worse wrong. I abandoned you. That is what it was, and I will call it by its name. I was — I was ashamed, and I left rather than face you, and I am sorrier for that than for anything that came before it.”

He heard her fumbling with her hands. “Are you sorry for… all of it?”

“Good Lord, no.” The reply breathed out of him before his better sense could catch it. “Elizabeth, I… I think it was the most magnificent hour of my life, but I—”

“You are here now,” she interrupted.

“I am here.”

“Then stay.”

He stayed.

He had eaten little since Thursday. Tonight he was hungry, which had not seemed possible an hour ago, and he made himself begin. Even with talk so small the substance would be forgot by morning, but he could carry the sound of her voice with him after the fracture.

“The factor sent word this morning about the east field drainage,” he said. “I have given Angus instructions for the spring.”

“Good.”

The word was small and arrived alone. He had been ready to give her the rest of it — the figures, the question of which tenant would lose the wet acreage, the calculation he had been turning since dawn. She did not ask.

“The weather has been clearer these last days. I heard the headland was—”

“Yes,” she said. “It has been.”

He was aware, in a way he had not been in months, of the effort the ordinary evenings had required — the performance of George Carlisle across a table, present and giving nothing away. Tonight, he could not find the man. He had left him somewhere in the passage.

He wanted to tell her she had nothing to be ashamed of. He thought a long time and could not find a way to say it without naming what he was referring to, which would require her to name it too. He was not going to ask that of her.

“I owe you an answer,” he said. “From Thursday. What you asked me, at the end.”

“I… I am sorry… what?”

“You asked what kind of music.”

“Oh.” She stopped. “I had forgotten. So much else has—” She stopped. “You did not answer.”

“No.” He turned his glass on the table. “I grew up with a great deal of it. A house where it was constant. My sister plays.” It was an effort to say it; he heard the small admission of it in his own voice and could not call it back. “She is still playing. I am the one who is not there to hear it. And there were other evenings. Other rooms. A pianoforte played with a great deal of feeling and rather less attention to the keys.”

A small silence. He had given her something — more than he had meant to, more than was prudent — and she had heard it.

“Badly played,” she said, after a moment, lightly.

He could have wept at the lightness. “Her own assessment, not mine.”

“And what did she play, this enthusiast of yours?”

“Whatever she chose. She had strong opinions about what ought to be played and was not shy about them.”

“I approve of her already.” Elizabeth set down her glass. “Will you tell me her name?”